news, views and reviews of Shakespeare on film (and in the Pacific Northwest)
Posted in "Put money in my purse!", Actors, Macbeth on May 12th, 2008
American Theater Wing, founder of the Tony Awards, has posted an audio interview with Patrick Stewart, who is currently playing Macbeth on Broadway…put money in my purse!
For those of you who, like me, alack, cannot afford the plane & theater tickets, the link to the interview, at least, is here.
There’s a very thoughtful commentary on Macbeth by Harry V. Jaffa over at the Claremont Institute. The essay investigates the declining morality of Western civilization vis-a-vis three of its literature’s most memorable anti-heroes: Macbeth, Raskolnikov of Dostovesky’s Crime and Punishment, and Camus’ Stranger, Merseault.
The message—I am tempted to call it the moral—of Macbeth, is the [...]
Posted in Macbeth on Jan 30th, 2008
Directed by Geoffrey Wright
Starring Sam Worthington and Victoria Hill
Bloody, Bold Macbeth
I like filmmakers who get their hands dirty wrestling with the Bard, who don’t take the text as something sacrosanct but rather as something to be lived, breathed, and dramatized. I have a soft-spot for Baz Luhrmann’s hyperactive, R + J, for example, and Peter [...]
Geoffrey Wright, the director who gave us (by way of a truly disturbing performance by Russell Crowe) the truly disturbing movie about Australian skinheads, Romper Stomper, has re-envisioned Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a drug-land setting, complete with the three witches as Goth chicks.
Yikes.
It isn’t clear to me from the review how much of the script is [...]
Posted in Bard Northwest, Macbeth on May 9th, 2007
Full of Sound and Fury
Portland, Oregon’s Northwest Classical Theater Company (NWCTC) is currently offering a dramatic, dynamic staging of Shakespeare’s classic horror show, Macbeth, at the Shoe Box Theater. This modern-dress production emphasizes the “sound and fury” of the Scottish Play, serving up an audience-pleasing assortment of sex, swordfights, strobe lights, murder, witchcraft, and lopped-off [...]
Shakespeare's Othello meets Spenser's Faerie Queene in this new and provocative mystery-thriller set in Milwaukee.
This is the story of James Ireton, a gifted young Shakespeare scholar haunted by a tragic past and recurring nightmares of a Knight, a Lady and a vicious Dragon. James thinks they’re just dreams, but when two people close to him fall victim in a seemingly motive-less series of brutal murders, James discovers there may be a very real Dragon preying in the shadows of his life. Worse, if he doesn’t find a bit of St. George in himself, the woman he loves may prove the Dragon’s ultimate victim.